The crossroads of Project Roadmaps and Available Resources

January 1, 2018 2:00 PM

I have a lot of personal creative projects going on at a time, each with its own lists of tasks and subtasks. I'm looking for an iOS compatible system that will aggregate the top item from 10-15 separate lists into an actionable "Next Steps" smartlist.

I'm great at breaking down projects into granular next-steps to make progress attainable. I'm also great at setting aside time after work or on weekends to Do Projects. The time and energy I have available when I get home from work any given day is fairly variable, so I only pick the specifics of what I work on at the last minute. (Since these are personal projects, priorities and deadlines are nebulous.)

I'd like to be able to pull up a single view on my phone and see:

Project A: Task Q
Project B: Task N
Project C: Task 7
...
Project L: Task $"

And from there be able to complete one of those tasks, then decide if I want to continue doing tasks on that project, or switch to the next tasks of a different project, all in that same view.

Right now my favorite toDo app is Clear because it feels most like pen and paper. I'm also flirting with Trello, but don't want to invest too deeply if there's a system out there that meets this specific need.

Reminders/deadlines/scheduling are handled in my calendar app and I don't need to link the two. I find tagging/flagging systems overwhelming because I create tasks at such a granular level.

posted by itesser to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

I do this in Todoist, using a filter to pull from a specific set of projects and then displaying either the next item or the items for a specific date range.
posted by third word on a random page at 2:25 PM on January 1, 2018

Response by poster: Filters are a premium feature on Todoist, and I don't want to pay for a year then go through the cancellation process if it doesn't fit my need.

Can you confirm that filters can be configured to show exactly 1 task from each project in the filter range?
posted by itesser at 2:49 PM on January 1, 2018

Best answer: Omnifocus is great at this. You can have as many projects as you like, and then choose to show only next actions.

When you're in planning mode, you can even get more detail-oriented and do things like action groups and subtasks, and settings like parallel or sequential (for things with complex dependencies).
posted by brentajones at 3:22 PM on January 1, 2018 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I use omnifocus off and on whenever my life gets really complicated. It is made for exactly this.
posted by metahawk at 3:38 PM on January 1, 2018

Things!
posted by mathiu at 10:58 PM on January 1, 2018

Things is pretty close to what you want, and is great in other ways too. I mark the Next Action in each project with a star, and it puts them all in a list for you. You’d probably want to review your list at the end of the day or chunk of time and update which items come next for when you next work on stuff. I’ve used it for years as part of my GTD-lite system and it’s reliable and easy to use.
posted by harriet vane at 6:55 AM on January 2, 2018

Since you’re already flirting with Trello: I think butler for Trello should be able to do this; haven’t tried it out though.
posted by meijusa at 11:32 AM on January 2, 2018

Response by poster: The "Sequential" project type in OmniFocus is exactly what I needed, thank you!
posted by itesser at 3:58 PM on January 3, 2018